While the saying may not be entirely true, I don't think that's its purpose. It's supposed to be an effective comeback for someone being picked on, so the bully doesn't feel like they have that emotional control over their victim. Telling the bully that his words hurt you and then crying about it in front of him will just encourage him :P

Without getting into the details, I was in a situation where fighting back verbally would have resulted in an ass whooping. I kept my cool, and ended up having a fair conversation with some of the more balanced lads. I'll admit that I was raging mad during the drive home, but the sticks and stones thing supports how I kept my cool while I was being harrassed by a group of cowboys... on a farm... in Wisconsin... I should have known better than to go there, in retrospect :P

Words only hurt if you let them hurt. I was made fun of for years but I turned out just fine, mostly because I ignored the bullshit fully understanding that most of the bullies would end up with 8 kids in a trailer working a dead-end construction job with no future.

I somewhat agree. The words aren't so bad, but the frustration that comes from knowing there is no way to stop it hurts so much.

I remember the last time it happened to me... A bunch of teenage boys saw me on my bikeride home from school and thought I would be a good target. I looked like someone their age and at that age cycling on your own is unusual. They started harassing me. The names they called me were mostly retarded ("fucking Turk", "whore" etc because a blond haired, blue eyed girl in her winter coat obviously looks like a Turkish prostitute), but it went on for 45 minutes. If there were only two of them I could have pushed one in a ditch or something, but I can't take on five people. I ignored them the whole time, not showing any emotion. By the time I got home I was very angry and upset and my parents got angry at me for being angry and not being allowed to have an emotional outlet after that just sucks.

See, this is why I'm glad I grew up in a small town. Everyone generally got along with everyone else, and as such I don't consider high school to be a living hell of psychological trauma like you people apparently do. :P

Mesh, I don't know where you went to high school but most public high schools are hellholes. In middle school I was picked on because I knew a second language, and thus was counted as an 'immigrant' despite being an American citizen. It wasn't even because I was weaker or not as strong as everybody, it was just that I was meek and didn't like conflict. That changed between middle school and high school, as the same people who terrorized me ended up having to fight me. I didn't win all my fights but I won enough that people eventually left me alone. Even after that people would try to pick on me for some inane reason (like the fact that I hung out with a geekish crowd, or I was an AP honors student). Fortunately for me, people that bullied me were individuals and not groups, so I was pretty well off compared to some other people. Basically, as long as you establish yourself as someone on equal footing, they won't bother you because it's not worth their effort to bully someone who's just gonna start fighting them.

I absolutely loathe bullying, even though I've done my share of it in the past (well, in this case the guy deserved it because he practically lied to his parents about me and my friends beating him and locking him up). When I catch somebody insulting me, I strike back. Too bad every bully is actually such a wuss, I could kick their ass otherwise.

But where I live, verbal insults are nothing compared to physical slaughter. While there's not any violence in my school, the conflict between Estonian and Russian is tense. So tense that if you're in Russian shitlist, you'll be teared down by them sooner or later (like my friend who once was just walking home when random Russians striked him from the back and continued to kick him until he was almost breathless). When you see that kind of thing, and believe me, you see it very very often, the bullying in school becomes a joke for you.

I think that's actually the mainstay problem most people's childhood or younger-day emotional trauma comes from. Simply put, everybody's been bullied at one point or another, some more than others. Environment obviously is going to affect things as you grow up, and for me, I was a pretty introverted kid who kept to himself.

But it wasn't until I stood up for myself and started getting my ass kicked did I feel emotionally better about myself, and started to gain some self-esteem. I mean sure I had bruises and cuts everywhere, but like Alisha said, that's pretty trivial compared to years of regret and self-loathing locked deep inside.

I say this from a perspective that I never had an emotional outlet in such situations either. Though it did help to realize people who pick and bully on others lack something better to do, and will be serving me fast food once high school graduates.

I saw one of them 4 years later out of highschool at McDonnalds, and kindly reminded him of the time he tried to steal from the kiosk I was volunteering for during lunch. He remembered it pretty instantly when I mentioned the 35-pound backpack I railed into his head after chasing him halfway across the school, then beat his ass in front of the principal (oops...).

don't get me wrong if someone calls me a fag or a GENIAL MEMBER OF ETHNIC GROUPS THAT ORIGINATE IN THE AFRICAN CONTINENT OR CLOSEBY THEREIN it may make me want to throw down but it doesn't hurt. what really did a fuckload of damage to me is that i had an alchoholic parent that would often tear into me verbally. one thought is that i got picked on a lot by boys. have you you ever heard the phrase if you hear something enough times you start to believe it. i think this is the core of my being and what causes me to rebel against almost everything i percieve to be normal.

Logged

“Normal is not something to aspire to, it's something to get away from.”

Okay, this is just STUPID. If you're going to censor the N word, then you should also censor the F*g word too, the two are virtually identical in their hate stigma. Just because one group has been granted full civil liberties while the other hasn't doesn't mean that one hatefull name is wrong while another one is okay. Also, most of the time, when I see the "N" word on a website like this, it's usually in self-mockery, the F*g word is mostly used by homophobic assholes. I'm not big on censorship, but seeing the F*g word used really boils my blood.